INVENTING NIAGARA:
Beauty, Power, and Lies
By Ginger Strand
(Simon & Schuster, 2008)

Like the river for which it’s named, Ginger Strand’s Inventing Niagara begins gradually, channeling mighty historical forces before branching off, gathering speed and turbulence before plunging in a breathtaking spectacle—only to rise again, light, airy, and refreshing as mist.

The author, a self-described hydroinfrastructure enthusiast, employs none of the technical terminology that could render such enthusiasm puzzling and dry to the average reader. Instead, she adopts a relaxed, chatty style that sucks you in like water through a turbine.

Early on her own curiosity leads us to discover new and profound interpretations of the Maid of the Mist legend. Approaching the topic like a cold case investigator, she seeks to discover the original version—the one uncorrupted by Victorian filigree that variously painted the Indian characters as natural sexpots or suicidal drunks.

After scouring libraries and conducting interviews, enlightenment comes when she recognizes that the commingling of intrusive Europeans with Native Americans created a new state of being—largely untranslatable to either camp. Stories told with specific purpose by each teller, interpreted and misinterpreted as ways of life changed, leaving a vanished past only suggestible through legend.

While many local histories of the Niagara region are corrupted either by allegiance to the tourist trade or phony reverence to historical personalities who were more often than not simple, cutthroat businessmen, Strand approaches her subject with a delighted detachment. Through it all, she illustrates the various ways in which the image of Niagara Falls as a wild, natural Eden has been perpetuated—even as it was being harnessed, groomed, and tamed to generate money right from the first appearance of white men, who really began arriving in droves with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825.

Strand connects the dots in interesting ways when she shows how the early daredevil stunts of tightrope walker Blondin captured the imagination of a nation on the brink of Civil War, as his weekly walks in the summers of 1859 and 1860 between the US and Canada were a daylight metaphor for the harrowing, clandestine border crossings of fugitive slaves traveling the underground railroad to freedom. Included is a political cartoon picturing Lincoln as Blondin, walking above the whirlpool with a fugitive slave atop his shoulders.

Even luminaries like Frederick Law Olmsted, revered for his eye for natural beauty, take subtle hits when we’re reminded how unnatural the very idea of landscape architecture is. Human tampering begets more human tampering—which is why Goat Island is now balanced with two large parking lots and hemmed with roads for cars and trolleys loaded with tourists who disembark to snap photos of the falls and the Nikola Tesla statue before paying up for the Cave of the Winds tour. Olmsted may have wanted to limit carriages and encourage walking on the island, but his taste was not strong enough to prevent progress.

Strand goes on to lead us through the history of hydroelectric power at Niagara, and thoughtfully includes a concise explanation of how the Robert Moses power plant capitalizes on electricity deregulation by generating more electricity when demand is high.

And of course, the harnessing of Niagara for electricity laid the groundwork for the area’s most frightening and long-lasting legacy—as a hotbed for nuclear and chemical waste. The military and the chemical industry left their mark on the area in the 20th century, as top-secret work on the Manhattan Project left contaminants to be dumped nearby. The technological leaps that made the atomic bomb possible were balanced by a breathtaking indifference to the dangers left behind. And Hooker Chemical, of course, became synonymous for corporate irresponsibility when the world learned of a Niagara Falls neighborhood called Love Canal.

But Strand’s book is not preachy. Her natural inquisitiveness and passion shine through on every page, and her impressive references and anecdotes add a real human element to the long, freakish history of the falls. As neatly and colorfully presented as a souvenir shop, her research is impressive—including an interview with local activist and Artvoice contributor Lou Ricciuti, and a reference to a 2001 series of Artvoice articles he wrote with our editor, Geoff Kelly. (No kidding! Geoff’s name is in the index, right above Grace Kelly.)

—buck quigley

Ginger Strand will appear at Talking Leaves Books (3158 Main Street) on May 15 at 7pm, to discuss her work, answer questions, and sign copies of the book.